Rename multiple columns by names

Question

Someone should have asked this already  but I couldn t find an answer  Say I have   x   data frame q 1 w 2 e 3     and many many columns         what is the most elegant way to rename an arbitrary subset of columns  whose position I don t necessarily know  into some other arbitrary names   e g  Say I want to rename  q  and  e  into  A  and  B   what is the most elegant code to do this   Obviously  I can do a loop   oldnames   c  q   e   newnames   c  A   B   for i in 1 2  names x  names x     oldnames i     newnames i    But I wonder if there is a better way  Maybe using some of the packages   plyr  rename etc

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Building on  user3114046 s answer   x  lt - data frame q 1 w 2 e 3  x    q w e  1 1 2 3  names x  match oldnames names x     lt - newnames  x    A w B  1 1 2 3   This won t be reliant on a specific ordering of columns in the x dataset

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Update dplyr 1 0 0 The newest dplyr version became more flexible by adding rename with   where  with  refers to a function as input  The trick is to reformulate the character vector newnames into a formula  by     so it would be equivalent to function x  return  newnames   In my subjective opinion  that is the most elegant dplyr expression    shortest  amp  most elegant expression df   gt   rename with   newnames  oldnames   A w B 1 1 2 3  Side note  If you reverse the order  argument  fn must be specified as  fn is expected before  cols argument  df   gt   rename with oldnames   fn     newnames   A w B 1 1 2 3

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This would change all the occurrences of those letters in all names    names x   lt - gsub  q    A   gsub  e    B   names x

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Sidenote  if you want to concatenate one string to all of the column names  you can just use this simple code   colnames df   lt - paste  renamed   colnames df  sep

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If the table contains two columns with the same name then the code goes like this   rename df newname oldname x newname oldname y

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Lot s of sort-of-answers  so I just wrote the function so you can copy paste    rename  lt - function x  old names  new names        stopifnot length old names     length new names         pull out the names that are actually in x     old nms  lt - old names old names  in  names x       new nms  lt - new names old names  in  names x          call out the column names that don t exist     not nms  lt - setdiff old names  old nms      if length not nms   gt  0            msg  lt - paste paste not nms  collapse                        are not columns in the dataframe  so won t be renamed            warning msg               rename     names x  names x   in  old nms   lt - new nms     x     x   data frame q   1  w   2  e   3   rename x  c  q    e    c  Q    E        Q w E  1 1 2 3

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Here is the most efficient way I have found to rename multiple columns using a combination of purrr  set names   and a few stringr operations   library tidyverse     Make a tibble with bad names data  lt - tibble       Bad NameS 1    letters 1 10        bAd NameS 2    rnorm 10     data    A tibble  10 x 2     Bad NameS 1   bAd NameS 2      lt chr gt                   lt dbl gt   1 a                    -0 840  2 b                    -1 56   3 c                    -0 625  4 d                     0 506  5 e                    -1 52   6 f                    -0 212  7 g                    -1 50   8 h                    -1 53   9 i                     0 420  10 j                     0 957    Use purrr  set names   with annonymous function of stringr operations data   gt       set names   str to lower      gt                     str replace all             gt                     str replace all  bad    good       A tibble  10 x 2    good names 1 good names 2     lt chr gt                 lt dbl gt   1 a                  -0 840  2 b                  -1 56   3 c                  -0 625  4 d                   0 506  5 e                  -1 52   6 f                  -0 212  7 g                  -1 50   8 h                  -1 53   9 i                   0 420 10 j                   0 957

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names x  names x   in  c  q   e    lt -c  A   B

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This is the function that you need  Then just pass the x in a rename X  and it will rename all values that appear and if it isn t in there it won t error  rename  lt -function x     oldNames   c  a   b   c     newNames   c  d   e   f     existing  lt - match oldNames names x     names x  na omit existing    lt - newNames which  is na existing      return x

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setnames from the data tablepackage will work on data frames or data tables  library data table  d  lt - data frame a 1 2 b 2 3 d 4 5  setnames d  old   c  a   d    new   c  anew   dnew    d        anew b dnew    1    1 2    4    2    2 3    5   Note that changes are made by reference  so no copying  even for data frames

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If one row of the data contains the names you want to change all columns to you can do  names data   lt - data row     Given data is your dataframe and row is the row number containing the new values   Then you can remove the row containing the names with  data  lt - data -row

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With dplyr you would do  library dplyr   df   data frame q   1  w   2  e   3       df   gt   rename A   q  B   e      A w B  1 1 2 3  Or if you want to use vectors  as suggested by  Jelena-bioinf  library dplyr   df   data frame q   1  w   2  e   3   oldnames   c  quot q quot   quot e quot   newnames   c  quot A quot   quot B quot    df   gt   rename at vars oldnames     newnames      A w B  1 1 2 3  L  D  Nicolas May suggested a change given rename at is being superseded by rename with  df   gt      rename with   newnames which oldnames     x     cols   oldnames      A w B  1 1 2 3

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You can get the name set  save it as a list  and then do your bulk renaming on the string  A good example of this is when you are doing a long to wide transition on a dataset   names labWide        Lab1    Lab10    Lab11    Lab12    Lab13    Lab14    Lab15    Lab16 1 35 75366 22 79493 30 32075 34 25637 30 66477 32 04059 24 46663 22 53063  nameVec  lt - names labWide  nameVec  lt - gsub  Lab   LabLat  nameVec   names labWide   lt - nameVec  LabLat1    LabLat10   LabLat11   LabLat12   LabLat13   LabLat14  LabLat15      LabLat16

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You can use a named vector    With base R  maybe somewhat clunky    x   data frame q   1  w   2  e   3    rename vec  lt - c q    A   e    B    names x   lt - ifelse is na rename vec names x     names x   rename vec names x     x   gt    A w B   gt  1 1 2 3   Or a dplyr option with       library dplyr   rename vec  lt - c A    q   B    e     the names are just the other way round than in the base R way   x   gt   rename    rename vec    gt    A w B   gt  1 1 2 3   The latter works because the  big-bang  operator     is forcing evaluation of a list or a vector      grave    grave           forces-splice a list of objects  The elements of the list are   spliced in place  meaning that they each become one single argument

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Another solution for dataframes which are not too large is  building on  thelatemail answer    x  lt - data frame q 1 w 2 e 3    gt  x   q w e 1 1 2 3  colnames x   lt - c  A   w   B     gt  x   A w B 1 1 2 3   Alternatively  you can also use   names x   lt - c  C   w   D     gt  x   C w D 1 1 2 3   Furthermore  you can also rename a subset of the columnnames   names x  2 3   lt - c  E   F     gt  x   C E F 1 1 2 3

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So I recently ran into this myself  if you re not sure if the columns exist and only want to rename those that do    existing  lt - match oldNames names x   names x  na omit existing    lt - newNames which  is na existing

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There are a few answers mentioning the functions dplyr  rename with and rlang  set names already  By they are separate  this answer illustrates the differences between the two and the use of functions and formulas to rename columns  rename with from the dplyr package can use either a function or a formula to rename a selection of columns given as the  cols argument  For example passing the function name toupper  library dplyr  rename with head iris   toupper  starts with  quot Petal quot     Is equivalent to passing the formula   toupper  x   rename with head iris     toupper  x   starts with  quot Petal quot     When renaming all columns  you can also use set names from the rlang package  To make a different example  let s use paste0 as a renaming function  pasteO takes 2 arguments  as a result there are different ways to pass the second argument depending on whether we use a function or a formula  rlang  set names head iris   paste0   quot  hi quot   rlang  set names head iris     paste0  x   quot  hi quot     The same can be achieved with rename with by passing the data frame as first argument  data  the function as second argument  fn  all columns as third argument  cols everything   and the function parameters as the fourth argument      Alternatively you can place the second  third and fourth arguments in a formula given as the second argument  rename with head iris   paste0  everything     quot  hi quot   rename with head iris     paste0  x   quot  hi quot     rename with only works with data frames  set names is more generic and can also perform vector renaming rlang  set names 1 4  c  quot a quot    quot b quot    quot c quot    quot d quot

[r] Rename multiple columns by names

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